Tag Archives: property tax appeal service

Chicago’s Inspiration Cafe Celebrates 30 Years

inspiration-cafeWhen it comes to helping Chicago area homeowners relieve their tax burden, we take a lot of satisfaction in the work we do for our clients. Once a year, however, we love stepping out of our usual routine to be part of something bigger.

Uptown’s Inspiration Cafe has been serving delicious, restaurant-style meals to the homeless for 30 years. And volunteers are a big part of how it works. This year, as in past years, we sent a crew of Kensington employees to the Café to help prep, cook, serve and clear during a dinner shift.

It’s a great experience among friendly people and a reminder of how many ways there are to make a difference in the community. We loved being part of “cheeseburger night,” but we also always come away tremendously impressed by the work that this organization does.
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Continued Push for Bill to Require Commercial Income Data

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi has not given up on efforts to pass legislation requiring some commercial property owners to submit information about building income to the assessor’s office, which he has called “the first, best step in legislative tax reform.”

The so-called Data Modernization Bill passed the Illinois Senate earlier this year, but was shelved by a House committee amid opposition from groups that include the Building Owners and Managers Association of Chicago, the Illinois Retail Merchants Association and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, among others. Opponents say the bill would impose burdensome reporting requirements and includes information that is confidential.

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Senior Exemption Will Renew Automatically Next Year

Cook County property owners who have already applied for and received a senior exemption will have one less chore next year under a law that makes the exemption automatic for property owners 65 and older.

In the past, the senior exemption had to be renewed annually, a task that the Cook County Treasurer’s Office found was overlooked by more than 25,000 of the county’s approximately 740,000 eligible seniors.

Under the law that went into effect this year, eligible seniors will only have to apply for the exemption once and it will auto renew annually. The exemption can reduce a homeowner’s property tax bill by an average of $300 a year as it reduces the property’s equalized assessed value by $8,000.
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Hard-hit Chicago Homeowners Could Face Additional Property Tax Hikes

Hard-hit Chicago Homeowners Could Face Additional Property Tax Hikes

Faced with a pension crisis and a budget shortfall of $838 million next year, Chicago’s mayor says additional property tax increases cannot be ruled out.

In comments made as part of her state of the city speech and more recently at a conference for municipal bond investors, Mayor Lori Lightfoot made it clear that other proposals for closing the gap, including the refinancing of some high-cost debt, may not be enough to avoid having to go back to property owners for the revenue that will be needed to meet the city’s pension obligations and other budget needs.

The gap, a third of which is attributed to pension costs, is the result of the city’s long-term failure to meet pension obligations and fix the structural problems that have caused the crisis, Lightfoot said.
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Put a Team of Property Tax Experts to Work Protecting Your Investment

ReliefThere is nothing like the relief you feel when you hand a problem off to an expert. Your mind stops racing and you can turn your attention to other matters with confidence.

That’s especially true when it comes to something as complex and time consuming as appealing your property taxes. Doing the work on your own can be stress-inducing – and disappointing. Appealing your assessment without making the strongest possible case means leaving money on the table. And the strongest possible case requires a deep dive into the most up-to-date data to find the right properties for comparison.

At Kensington, we have decades of experience and a track record of success in assisting with property tax appeals for homeowners, property managers and commercial property owners in the Chicago area. It’s a record built on expertise spread across an entire team of property tax specialists. When you sign on with Kensington to research and manage your property tax appeal, you get more than a property tax expert: you get a whole team of property tax experts.
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Second Installment Property Tax Bills Arrive in Cook County

Just when you thought it was safe to venture outside again, there is that envelope from the Cook County treasurer.

The bad news: Cook County property tax bills are rising on average 3.7% for tax year 2018.

The good news: Depending on where you live, you could see a tax bill that is largely unchanged from last year. An increase in overall taxable values and assessment increases in parts of the city contributed to a 6.6% reduction in the city’s overall tax rate and helped shift the tax burden away from the South Side, according to a report by Cook County Clerk Karen Yarbrough.
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5 Great Ways to Put Property Tax Savings Back into Your Property Value

When you make a successful argument for reducing your property tax assessment, your tax bill gets smaller and you pay less, potentially for up to three years.

You’ve helped protect the value of your most important investment and you’ve got money you can spend to make your home worth even more. Just how far can you stretch the value of a successful property tax appeal?

Reinvest your property tax savings into the right home improvement efforts and deliver additional ROI to the value of your home. Here are five projects experts say can deliver the biggest returns.
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Townships a Target of Consolidation Proponents

Townships a Target of Consolidation Proponents Property tax math can be a little intimidating on the assessment side, with its “coefficient of dispersions” and vertical equity component of the uniformity something-something.

But when it comes to the government agencies that are funded by the proceeds, it’s an equation that taxpayers understand intuitively: more government means more taxes.

Illinois taxpayers are not so different from their counterparts across the rest of the country in their grievances along these lines. But they hold the title when it comes to the number of taxing bodies on the payroll.
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New Cook Tax Assessor Promises to Shine Light on Assessment Process

Flashlight. Icon included flashlight with light. Flashlight in flat style.Cook County’s tax assessor’s office is under new leadership, with the swearing in earlier this month of Fritz Kaegi, a former asset manager who has promised a new era of accountability for the office.

Former Assessor Joseph Berrios, who lost to Kaegi in the March primary election after eight years in office, faced mounting criticism of his office’s handling of the county’s property tax system, including a Chicago Tribune-Pro-Publica Illinois investigative series that described a murky system of assessments that left some of the county’s poorest neighborhoods paying a disproportionate share in property taxes. University researchers and independent analysts also documented a flawed process.

Kaegi, calling the old system a “relic of urban machine patronage politics,” has pledged to bring transparency to the process and adopt practices that will result in fairer and more accurate assessments. He has also promised to make data and assessment variables public, “so that people can check our work.” That includes an audit by the International Association of Assessing Officers, the Chicago Tribune reports.
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Property Tax Breaks and Incentives for Some Leave Others Paying More

Rubber stamp with word exempt inside vector illustrationThe pressures facing taxing authorities in Chicago and in Cook County are unlikely to change any time soon. But paying all the taxes needed to close the budget gaps and meet all of those pension obligations is a constantly shifting process. A tax break in one place means some other place will be expected to make up the difference.

That’s the zero-sum nature of tax collection in an environment where budget cutting isn’t a practical or political option.
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